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Fianna's LSAT Diary:
I am a 40-something female in New York working on a second MA (this one in human rights), living in Queens with my fiance, 5 indoor cats, 4 outdoor cats, a puppy and a very loud bird. Decided to take the LSAT in June after I started taking a Humanitarian Law class and realized how much I love it. I signed up to take it twice before but the first time I got hit by a car the night before and the second time I tore my ACL on a bus. I'm expecting lightning to strike me this time but I forge ahead regardless.
Wednesday – Yes! A breakthrough!
I had a breakthrough yesterday. I have been wasting time on something that now seems so obvious.
On the logic game questions that say something like ” If L is seen on the fourth day, which of the following must be true?” I had been filling out, or attempting to, the whole game board! But if I just look at my setup and find the one thing that this scenario makes true, I don’t have to go on. Just look at the answers. Question finished. I had thought that the testmakers were just heartless bastards, here to make my life miserable, but I now see they are giving me the answer. I just wasn’t looking in the right place before.
DUH!
Total LSAT study time: 5 hours
Thursday – Basic Linear Logic
I did 21 basic linear logic games from many different PrepTests. Of those, 6 of them had 0 wrong answers and 15 had 1 or 2 wrong. I discovered that When I feel like the question is difficult, I panic about the time needed to figure it out and then I can’t think. I need to get the anxiety under control.
New Mantra: It’s only a test…
Total LSAT Study Time: 6.5 hours
Friday- A Day off – Sort of…
I had my human rights law class at noon. (offered by the Politics Dept. not Law) Class days are a pain in the ass because it takes an hour and a half to get to school. I don’t like wasting that kind of time on the subway. Plus my bag weighs a ton from the laptop and I have to carry books and LSAT prep materials at the same time. The weight makes it impossible to take coffee or water with me so I get it near campus.
So class ended at 2 but I had a thesis workshop to go to at 5:30. I made use of one of the graduate carrels at the library and tried to catch up on the reading for the Directed Readings I am doing on the Darfur and East Timor genocides. Caught up and even read an extra article. But in the meantime, I had texted the fiance to see if he wanted to come into town to see a movie. We are huge fans of the Oscar Nominated Shorts and go see them every year. Sometimes some of the most wonderful films of the year are the shorts. Toyland, New Boy, Black Rider and Oktapodi are some of the best films I’ve ever seen. After a lot of whining, he capitulated and planned to meet me for dinner and a movie. I took the rest of the time before the workshop to work on Logic Games.
We went to Onegin for dinner in Greenwich Village. The food was good but not great and two things made it not worth going back. The interior is charming and the ambience is fab. However, the food is very expensive. $8 for a beer, $24 for trout, $18 for a potato and mushroom appetizer. The trout was oversalted but not to the degree that would have made me send it back. But half an hour later in the movie theater, both of us got so thirsty that my upper lip cracked from the total lack of moisture in my body. By the time we got home around 1:30 am, all we could think about was water.
Subway shutdowns and my diabetic fiance’s insistence on stopping at Insomnia for cookies made my night especially annoying.
Total study time on the LSAT: 11 minutes
Saturday – Yeah, Okay
After last night’s adventure of late night movie and dinner of trout a la salt lick, I had to go back to bed after getting up at 5:30 to feed all the animals. Got up at 11 so I was already late with the study schedule. I had planned to work on various logic games. Yeah, okay.
The test started at noon and this time it didn’t kick me out. The experimental section turned out to be a logic games section but two of the games I had seen before. That says to me that one or more of the LSAT tutoring companies is using the experimental sections in their booklets and passing them off as part of the regular tests. I do not care for this idea at all. I missed a lot of questions in the test and in both logic games sections I had to randomly fill in bubbles before time ran out. Score on the test overall: 151. Pathetic in so many ways.
The test ended at 4:30 and my fiance’s best friend was coming for dinner at 6 so that was the end of LSAT study for the day.
Total Study time: 4.5 hours
Sunday – Call Me Conan, the Graduate Student
The trip into Manhattan carrying a car load of frightened, somewhat feral, definitely not indoor cats was one the world’s most unpleasant experiences. First, we couldn’t catch one of them at all and since he was flying around the enclosed porch, he was going to hurt himself, so we gave up.
After managing to cage mom and two of the boys, we put everyone in the car in the back seat. The dog (a puppy with a broken leg who was found by the city a couple of weeks ago) had to go along since she needed her cast changed.
About 15 mins into a rush hour trip, one of the cats peed. We cracked the windows because there was no point in doing anything about it until we got to the vet. BTW – the fiance is a vet tech and we were taking all the animals to his office. Then about 15 more mins and Daisy poo’d. The smell of cat poo makes me ill and I started gagging. This is a little dangerous when you are also driving. Rolled the windows all the way down hoping that the arctic wind would blow out the stench. Didn’t. My mantra quickly became “I’m gonna die…I’m gonna die…” After awhile though Walt said “You’re not going to die. You’re Conan the Graduate Student. You can do anything.” That made me laugh and we managed to make it to the Village without my hurling all over the dash. I had to apologize to the parking garage attendant for the disgusting smell and Walt had to bribe someone with my chocolate chip cookies to help him hose down Daisy, who had subsequently rolled around in her excrement.
Off to school…
Wait…off to The Bean…
I love The Bean. It is a great coffee place off Union Square that always gets my drink order right and has yummy macaroons. I indulged in both and sat at a window seat to study. After about an hour, they closed one of the outside doors which for some reason made everyone use the other one to go in and out, and the place I was sitting became a wind tunnel. I packed up and walked to campus.
The rule at the library is that a graduate student can reserve a study carrel for up to three hours a day. I had one reserved for noon to 3 and had to find somewhere else for my morning study. I discovered that most of these rooms go unused so I checked out Darfur Now and watched it in a carrel until I could get lunch and move to the one I reserved.
I wrote my papers, listened to a 1941 speech by FDR on human rights (his voice makes me sleepy) and worked on Advanced Linear games. Managed to sneak in 2 games. Did not ace them.
After class and a quieter ride home, I tried to study some more. But the day had taken a lot out of me and I had to stop after an hour. Personally I think it was FDR that put me over the edge.
Total LSAT study time: 2 hours
Monday – Oh yeah and I bake too.
My day included working 21 logic games from various PrepTests, checking the post-op of three kitties who were very pissed off to be trapped in the back porch, reading the first couple of chapters of Freedom From Poverty and washing laundry.
Two of the non-aced tests have now become understandable to me and have moved to the aced file and the one where I missed 5 out of 6 questions improved too. I only missed two on that one yesterday. Out of the 12 new games I tried (Advanced Linear), I aced 4 and missed one question on each of the remaining 8. My time has also improved slightly. Down from 15-18 minutes per game to 14-17 minutes per game. Hey, it’s a start.
Good news #2 – My paper prospectus was approved and I can start working on that.
Bad News #2 – We were approved by the department to have a double class on Friday – Yay! 4 straight hours of Human Rights Law. The instructor suggested we bring Red Bull. Yuck.
Total LSAT study time: 6.5 hours
Tuesday – Of Cookies and Kitties
The 5:30am animal feeding is unpleasant enough given the early hour, and this morning even more so when I realized that the newly neutered cats had torn through the screen of the enclosed porch and gotten out in the middle of the night. I am most worried about Daisy since she just had major surgery. She didn’t show up at all today, but her kittens all came back.
I made chocolate chip cookies at the crack of dawn for Walt to take to work too. So my morning was flying by. After he left, I spent the morning on Grouping Games. I was acing the drills and thought myself very smart. Did all 6 games in the section. Not so smart now. Missed one each on Games #1, #2; two questions each on Games #3, #4 (this one took me 30 minutes to complete!), #6 and 4 questions on Game #5.
A trip to the post office box netted me 3 additional PrepTests (44, 45, 51). And a book for school on Guantanamo.
Read about 30 pages of Freedom from Poverty in the afternoon. No cupcakes because I couldn’t find any real white chocolate. Bummer. Spent an hour or trying to figure out a way to get to Portland very cheaply so that I can go to my friend Allison’s graduation in June. Found out that I can take a series of MegaBuses (?) Megabi (?) from New York all the way to Omaha, Nebraska for a total of $20 each way. Can’t get farther West than that though. Again, bummer.
Evening was made up of 10 Games. Again not so smart. A couple of them I couldn’t even figure out how to set up. Aced two and got between 1 and 4 wrong on the rest.
Total LSAT Study time: 8 hours
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